Dragoon Review - A Fun Beer & Pretzels Game for the Beginners and Veterans alike

It's been months since I've posted anything, and I'm sorry for that. Gen Con was a blast, this was my first time going and I will definitely be going back next year as well. I also bought a lot of games, such as Scythe, Mystic Vale, Dead of Winter: The Long Night, Norsaga, Imhotep, and Dragoon. Oh, and Zombicide: Black Plague came in the mail a few months ago too. In short, we have a lot to talk about, so let's get to it.

It's time to leave your lair and take to the skies, because today we're conquering humans in Dragoon.

Foreword

This is the first game I bought at Gen Con. I was walking down the aisle when a guy said "Would you like to hold a metal dragon?" Before I could respond, I had a copper dragon in my hand. It felt good, it had weight to it. I asked some questions, looked at the display, and got an awesome free pin. Side note: pin collecting ended up being a major part of my Gen Con 2016 experience, but that's another story. I didn't buy Dragoon right away, but while I was browsing around the exhibition hall, it stuck in my mind. It was gnawing at me, I had to have this game. I finally went back and bought it, regretting nothing.

Dragoon ended up being a smash hit with the friends that we met up with at Gen Con. The first night we played it in the hotel bar until it closed. The next day we went back to Lay Waste Games to tell the designers what a great game they made. The friends we played it with the night before bought a copy, and so did their friends after playing it with us. I even ended up going back again the third day to have them all sign my instruction booklet (and to grab the other pin design they had.) 

Anyways...

For centuries, you and the other dragons have lived in peace on your island. Now, you've noticed strange new creatures, humans, putting up settlements across the land. Your land. The presence of these intruders has awakened your primal, destructive instincts. Will you raze the pathetic villages of the human scum, or rule over them with an iron fist claw?

TL;DR

I love this game. It's extremely portable, which makes it an ideal pick for a gaming meet-up with friends at a coffee shop, bar, or other public area. The box is roughly the size of a hardcover book, but also has a cloth bag (that also serves as the score tracker) that easily contains all the pieces. The rules are straight-forward and simple, making it a great choice for getting new people into board gaming. It's a light-hearted game with a lot of randomness involved, so more competitive players may be left feeling frustrated at the end.

Pros

Easy to learn

Quick set-up

Durable pieces

Easy transport

Random nature keeps everybody in the game

Can opt out of some random elements (both as a group and as a player)

Cons

Not a lot of depth

Unlucky rolls can really set you back

Random nature keeps everybody in the game

Some cards are way better than others

Game is a little pricey

Only plays up to 4 people

Objectives

To win Dragoon, be the first player to get 50 gold. Gold is earned by destroying villages and cities, stealing from other dragons, or subjugating human villages and cities. 

Subjugating the humans allows you to roll a die during the 'tribute phase' to determine how much tribute gold you gain from all of your conquered territories. A 6 gives you the maximum payout from all territories, a 2/3/4 gives you a smaller payout, and a 1 makes you lose a territory of your choice, symbolizing a rebellion against your rule. As somebody who is chronically unlucky, I stay away from this.

Destroying the humans offers a large, one-time payout equivalent to rolling a 6 in the tribute phase, but removes that village or city from the board. Destroying also spares you from having to roll a die to get gold, which can be a nice alternative for the 'luck challenged' players among us.

Stealing is done by entering another dragon's lair while they are not there. Once inside, you roll a die to determines how much gold you steal from their hoard and add to your own, 1 gold for a 1, 2 gold for a 2, and so on. You can't steal more gold than the other player has, so if you roll a 6 and they only have 3 gold, you only get 3. Be careful though, if you end your turn in another dragon's lair, they are returned home immediately, they steal 3 gold from you, and you are sent home to your own lair. Unfortunately, due to the way the amount of actions it takes, stealing from another dragon isn't usually worth it.

Another form of stealing comes from the thief. The thief functions as a sort of 'ghost player.' The thief has her own piece on the scoreboard that gains gold and can even win the game. When you roll to place new villages and one would be placed where there is already a city or dragon's lair, the thief gains 3 gold, and her treasure chest is put on the map. Dragons can move to the treasure chest and steal gold from it the same way they can from a dragon's lair. If a dragon ends their turn on the treasure chest, the thief  relocates her hidden stash to another square immediately. The developers told me that while playtesting, a woman managed to get the thief to win, in honor of this, they named the thief after her.

Gameplay

Playing Dragoon is about as straightforward as it can get. Each round has 3 phases, populate, action, and tribute. First, you populate the board with new human villages by rolling both dice. The result serves as coordinates to put the new village. The copper die is up and the black die is across, so if you rolled 2 on copper and 5 on black, the new village would be placed at the (2, 5) square, just like graphing back in grade school. You repeat this process n + 1 times, where n = number of players. This phase takes only a few seconds once you get the hang of it and lets you get right back into actually playing.

The action phase is where the bulk of the game happens. At the start of your turn, draw a card. Playing cards on your turn costs no actions and lets you cover more ground, take extra actions, or simply destroy everything in your path. Next, you must take 3 actions. Moving one square takes an action, capturing a village/city takes an action, destroying takes an action, and so on. Having only 3 actions feels like just enough to get something accomplished each turn without having to carefully weigh each option and slow the game down. Likewise, having to take 3 actions keeps people from squatting on territories they control, ending their turn early, or simply passing. It's good for keeping the game moving.

After all the players have taken their turn, the tribute phase starts. Each player that controls a village or city takes a turn rolling one die. Only a single die is rolled and the outcome determines what happens from all territories the player has. This phase also goes by quickly because you have, at most, four people rolling a single die each before moving on. At the end of the tribute phase, the player with the last gold gets to chose who goes first at the start of the next round.

What I like about Dragoon's gameplay is that it feels streamlined. You're not stuck waiting for that one friend who takes forever to make decisions. You're not stuck tallying points or doing board upkeep, the entire system seems carefully planned to focus on actually playing.

Randomness

This island isn't big enough for the four of us.

Chance is such a big part of the game that it gets its own paragraph. Randomness helps make sure that the game is slightly different each time. You can even do random starting locations for the dragon lairs, which really adds another layer of chaos to the entire experience. See, usually each dragon gets to be the center of their own 3x3 quadrant of the board, but if you roll for starting positions you sometimes get goofy situations like all 4 dragons being nearly on top of each  other in one corner of the board.

Sometimes you might just get unlucky and have no villages spawn near you. Other times there's that one player undoubtedly gets a ton of villages and cities right by their lair, subjugates them all, and makes a killing from tributes. You might be safe in your corner with your human cities and then, suddenly, another player draws the perfect card for a combo and wrecks all your territories in the blink of an eye.

In the pros and cons I mentioned "random nature keeps everybody in the game" because you're never really out of the running. In a several of my playthroughs, the person that was getting stomped into the ground for the first half of the game ended up coming back and winning it all when people decided to give them a break. The moral of the story is to never show mercy in Dragoon embrace luck and have a good time. This is not a game for the ultra competitive.

The Pieces

I have the special edition because I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff (and also that's the only version of the game that was for sale at Gen Con.) The metal pieces are well-made and look beautiful, and their weight holds the cloth game map down so a breeze or fan doesn't ruin everything. Each set of pieces (dragon, lair, and 9 tribute markers) has its own small cloth bag, making it easy to hand out at the beginning of the game. The bags keep everything each player needs all conveniently together.

The parts that aren't made of durable metal are made of awesome machine-washable cloth! The score tracker doubles as a bag that holds all the other game pieces, which further cements Dragoon's place as one of the best beer & pretzel games. Go ahead, take it to a bar, spill a beer on it? No problem. You can't hurt the plastic/metal pieces with spills, just wipe them off. 

The cards are the same quality you'd find in a pack of playing cards. They have the same feel and texture as well. The box for the cards has a list printed on it of how many of each card there is, which helps during clean up to make sure everything is there (and also helps if you're the card-counting type.)

Last are the two-sided cardboard tiles that represent villages (black) and cities (red). They feel study, and seem mildly spill-resistant. They aren't up to the thickness and feel of the cardboard pieces from The Resistance, but they don't feel like wear and tear will totally destroy them either. If there was a spill near/on the game, I would definitely tend to these guys first.

Conclusion

Dragoon is a blast. I would recommend it for all except the most serious, competitive, and strategic-minded of game groups. This game is great for children and is a good tool to introduce your friends to boardgaming with its light, easy to follow rules and gameplay. 

Everything fits inside the bag.

A downside is that the game is a little pricey for its size and genre. Its $100 (now $75) price tag is a little steep when you consider the depth Dragoon has when compared to something else in that price range like Dead of Winter or Lords of Waterdeep. To be fair, Lay Waste Games is also a smaller company than the publishers of the other games I mentioned, and the quality of their product is top-notch.

That being said, Dragoon is only available to purchase through their website http://www.laywastegames.com/ and the next shipment will be ready in a week or so. Thanks for reading, everyone. If you have questions, comments, or think I missed something, let me know.